Marseilles Holiday Tournament (boys) — Donovan Oliver and Dalton Nuding of Kewanee. Oliver was named the tournament’s MVP for the second consecutive season.

Warkins Cardinal Classic at Erie (boys) — Trevor Lay and Matt Jenkins of Wethersfield, Jake Berchtold of Stark County and Parker Neuhalfen of Bureau Valley. Lay was named the tournament’s MVP in leading the Geese to the championship. It was the second time the senior guard earned MVP honors this season, as the claimed that hardware at Wethersfield’s own Wally Keller Classic in November.

State Farm Holiday Classic (girls) — It seems with every passing game and tournament, Annawan senior Celina VanHyfte makes more history. The SIU recruit was named to the all-tournament team at the Bloomington-Normal tourney, becoming only the second female player to make the State Farm Holiday Classic’s all-tournament team all four years.

If any area coaches have all-tournament team results from boys basketball tourneys at Princeville, Eastland and Sherrard, please forward them to mlandis@starcourier.com and I’ll get them in a future Hoops Notebook column.

Boilers finally healthy

Kewanee has rattled off eight straight wins after starting the season 2-3. The reason? Coach Steve Salisbury’s team is finally starting to get healthy.

Illness and injury have sidelined a number of Boilers — David Washburn, Jared Nimrick, Dalton Nuding, Kentrel Welcome, Juan Contreras — in the first month of the season, but now it’s all hands on deck.

“Tonight (Monday) is the first night that we had all nine of our top nine guys,” said Salisbury following his team’s 84-69 victory over Putnam County to win the Marseilles Holiday Tournament. “We kind of thought our bench would help us win this game. Our bench played super.”

Leading the bench charge for the Boilers are John Moraski, Welcome, energetic freshman guard Contreras and Dawson Nuding.

First Erie title for Flying Geese

Wethersfield captured its first Warkins Cardinal Classic title in five trips to the holiday tournament in Erie.

Prior to Monday night’s 77-69 win over Stockton in the championship game, Wethersfield’s best finish at Erie was third place last season.

Page 2 of 2 - “I think the Erie tournament is as hard to win as any,” said Wethersfield coach Jeff Parsons. “It’s darn good competition.”

First Christmas tourney win since 1997

Kewanee’s win over Putnam County was the first time the Boilers captured a Christmas tourney title since the State Farm Holiday Classic in 1997.

Coach Chris Gustafson’s team defeated Normal U-High 57-47 to win the Class A division at Bloomington-Normal. At that time, the tournament had a King of the Hill game — Class A champion vs. Class AA champion.

The Boilers met Galesburg, led by University of Iowa recruits Joey Range and Rod Thompson, and fell to the Silver Streaks 96-58.

Paxson joins 1,000-point club

With 17 points in the 60-51 Monticello Holiday Tournament championship game win over Mt. Zion, Stark County senior Madisyn Paxson became the program’s sixth player to reach 1,000-point mark.

While Annawan settled for the fourth-place trophy in the girls small school division at the State Farm Holiday Classic, the Bravettes left their mark on the tournament’s record book.

Celina VanHyfte became the tourney’s all-time leading scorer with 358 points, surpassing the previous mark of 262 points held by Zahna Medley of Springfield (2009-11).

Megan Foes tied the record for most 3-pointers in a game when she knocked down eight treys in Annawan’s 73-64 quarterfinal win over Brimfield. Foes joins Jamie Herriott of Paxton-Buckley-Loda (1999) and Tasha Gaston-Bell of Bloomington (2003) with eight in a game.

Annawan’s 52 first-half points against Downs Tri-Valley matched the record for points in a half, which was set by Downs Tri-Valley in 2010 against Bloomington Central Catholic.